


A Daughter's Duty

by YourLocalPriestess



Series: Queen & Lionheart [1]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, let's start the shit show!!, responsibility is hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 07:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11435727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourLocalPriestess/pseuds/YourLocalPriestess
Summary: Vivian Ryder came to Andromeda to choose her own path and start fresh, but that decision is stolen from her before she has the chance to make it.





	A Daughter's Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Queen & Lionheart! @joufancyhuh's and my love child. I write Vivian Ryder, and she writes Maxine.
> 
> As it says in the tags, let the shitshow begin! *evil laughter*

_ I’m going to kick her fucking ass. _

Viv slammed her back into cover and groaned. Beams from the aliens’ weapons fired over her head in every direction. She tried to catch her breath. Kosta caught her eye from a few feet away, clearly doing the same, then leaning out to fire. She let her head fall back against the crate for a moment and closed her eyes.  _ How is everything this fucked? Goddammit. _

“Viv! I need you. We’re going in. Cora, Liam; cover us.”

“Shit.” She peaked out and saw her father bee lining for the door, blasting through the enemy as he went. She looked at Kosta and turned on her comm. “You guys got this?”

“Yeah,” Kosta said with a nod.

“We’ll cover you. Now go!” Cora shouted in her ear.

Viv blew out a shaky breath and sprinted. Her shields flickered as shots glanced her. She raised her shotgun and aimed for any foreign face that crossed her vision. In moments, she was at her father’s side, mere feet from the entrance to the...the monolith before them. A bout of panic rushed through her chest as gunshots barely missed them while they worked together to shove open the doors, the metal screeching against her earbuds as they did. He was saying something to her, and she was replying, but it was autopilot. She couldn’t think past the buzzing in her own head, the panic still knotted in her chest.

Her father walked toward a console in the center of the room like it was something he did every day. She took a few shaky steps forward in his shadow, but kept her distance. This man wasn’t her father, not right now. He was Alec Ryder, the Human Pathfinder. It was all too evident as he raised one hand in the air over the device, flexing his fingers slightly, and everything came to life. The technology beneath his fingers seemed to take a literal breath of life as it skittered in a wave of movement. A gigantic triangular interface lit up, and Alec Ryder gripped luminous glowing dots and moved them to his whim. The machine, the monolith, answered with a thrum. Outside, the sound of crossfire died. But more than that, the sound of the tumultuous environment itself seemed to go silent.

Viv felt her jaw drop. She turned away from the man she didn’t recognize before, and looked at their entrance. Her feet carried her out into the air, which, even now through her suit, felt like air again, and not electrical tension waiting to burst.

Alec’s hand was heavy on her shoulder. When she looked up, she saw her father, his eyes wide and wondrous.

“It worked,” she whispered, barely louder than a breath. He might not have even heard her, save for the comms.

“It looks like it. Maybe there’s hope after all.”

A breathy laugh left her as she looked from him to the world before her, a grin beginning to form on her lips. “We can make this work.”

SAM began speaking, but was cut off by the sound of rushing air and metallic clicks behind them. Before Viv finished turning, a cloud of white and lightning blasted them backward. She slammed into a crate and screamed. The cloud didn’t stop. She flew past the crate, limbs flailing as she scrabbled for purchase against the steel surface. Her fingers caught the edge for a moment, and she gripped with everything she had, but the cloud let out another gust and then she was flying and falling and alone.

 

 

Sensation rushed back into her limbs in the form of pain and fire: Pain, as every limb throbbed with the shock of the collision with the earth. Fire, as she gasped in poison. Her fingers flew to the shattered hole where her mask had been. Someone was talking in her ear, but she couldn’t _breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe_. She rolled over on her hands and knees, gripping her throat with one hand and looking around for her father. The noxious air blurred her vision and made her feel light headed, though maybe that was the lack of oxygen. A black blur limped toward her. It was shouting at something. Maybe her. She looked up, mouth opening and closing, enable to make any sound come forth other than a ragged cough.

“We don’t have that long.”

Just as black began encroaching on her vision, she felt the remains of her helmet being lifted off her head and being replaced by another. She gasped in a clean breath of air. Her vision cleared enough for her to make out her father, cradling her body and skull until she lay prone on the ground. She tried to lift her hand to shove him off, but it wouldn’t listen.

“What are you doing?” she attempted, unable to tear her eyes away from the unfathomable look he was giving her.

He opened his mouth to speak. Then everything went black.

 

 

Consciousness faded in and out like a bad extranet connection, and always filled her with pain. Faces she knew she should recognize surrounded her each time, and always sounded as terrified as she knew she should feel.  _ What are her vitals? You have to save her Doc. SAM, what’s going on? _ And every time she thought she could speak, numb darkness swallowed her again. 

Actual consciousness, the permanent kind, the kind she couldn’t hide from in darkness anymore, filled her slowly. And painfully. She focused on the rise and fall of her own chest, the dry stickiness in her mouth as she darted her tongue out over her bottom lip, the lack of achiness in her limbs.

When she opened her eyes she was met with grey. And then Kosta filled her vision.

“Hey, you’re awake!” He helped her into a sitting position as she stared at him with furrowed brows. “How do you feel?”

A glance around the room showed her that it wasn’t only Kosta,  _ Liam, _ who looked at her with the big, concerned eyes. Dr. T’Perro was there, as well as Cora. 

“Confused.” She swallowed. “Thirsty.” Cora shuffled around for a moment before bringing a glass over. “What happened? Where’s dad?”

They all exchanged a loaded glance. Viv swallowed her drink and set the glance down in favor of gripping the edge of the slab she was sitting on. The good doctor was the first to look at her.

“Your father died, Ryder.”

The air left her lungs in one huff, like the woman had kicked her in the gut. Her mouth fell open, unable to make a sound.

“You’re the new Pathfinder.”

Viv snapped her head toward Cora, mouth falling open impossibly further. She blinked rapidly and closed her eyes, scrunching up her nose. “No. No, no, no.” Her tongue darted out over her lips. She looked up at the doctor.

“It’s true. When Alec died, he transferred the role of Pathfinder to you.”

A strangled sound slipped out of her chest. Something between a sob and a laugh. “That’s not possible.” She whipped her head toward Cora. “It’s supposed to be you. Not me.”

Cora pursed her lips, something harder than pity shining under the surface of the look. “I know. But he gave it to you. There’s no going back.”

“What do you mean?” Viv frowned and scanned all of their faces. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t  _ train _ for this.”

Liam laid a comforting hand on her arm. “He must’ve thought you were ready.”

Suddenly her mouth felt more dry than it had when she had woken up. She looked to the doctor, again. “What happened to me? To him? Why can’t we undo this?”

T’Perro sighed. “Even with your father’s mask, you’d inhaled too much of the air. You were dead for twenty two seconds before we brought you back. And when we brought you back, things were going wrong. Your organs kept giving out. You couldn’t breathe. Your heartbeat was erratic, moving from racing to crawling in a matter of minutes. SAM said it could save you. So, we let it.

“In saving you, it had to integrate itself into your mind. SAM is now as much a part of you as you are yourself. It’s also, apparently, part of being the Pathfinder.”

Viv coughed. “This...this doesn’t make sense. This is impossible.”

“I’m afraid it is entirely possible, Pathfinder,” SAM piped in.

Viv sobbed once and buried her face in her hands.

After a moment of silence, Cora said, “We’ll leave you two alone for a bit. Ping if you need us.”

The shuffle of feet followed by the closing of the door left Viv feeling cold. A shiver raced down her spine. She dug her fingers into her scalp and scrunched her eyes shut to stave off the wayward tears trying to fight their way to the surface.

“Is there anything I can do to help, Pathfinder?”

“Get out of my fucking head,” she growled.

“If I did, we would both die.”

The silence left by such a declaration was enough to suck the life out of her anger, and even most of her self-pity. She ran a hand through her hair and looked up, half expecting some form of a body to match the voice in her head. The wall was grey. As she turned, she noticed the room was largely uniform, except for one console and a hovering blue, pixelated interface. She rose to inspect it up close.

“Where am I, SAM?”

“This is the SAM node aboard the Hyperion, where my data is chiefly housed.”

“All your data?”

“Yes,” it confirmed.

She puffed out a breath through her nose. “Alright, SAM. Looks like we have to work together. Tell me what I need to know. What I’m supposed to do.”


End file.
